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Purdy

For print, publishing and production businesses

Stop wasting hours on repetitive admin.

I spent 22 years inside magazine production: print planning, paper procurement, supplier contracts and reporting. I fix the manual work that quietly costs businesses like yours days every month.

Customers now ask for carbon figures on every job. If yours are worked out by hand each time, that is a good place to start.

Book a Discovery CallSee How I Can Help

You should not need one person's memory to run production.

These are the problems businesses bring to me. If any of them sound like your week, that is the sort of work I fix:

  • Emissions figures worked out from scratch every time a customer asks
  • Supplier invoices checked line by line against contracted rates
  • Print run and quantity decisions held in one person's head
  • Stock, reel and contingency data sitting in separate systems and spreadsheets
  • Production and commercial reports rebuilt every month
  • Contract terms scattered across emails and supplier statements

What I do

Services

Seven straightforward ways to work together. Built around print, publishing and production operations, though the same problems appear in any business running suppliers, contracts and spreadsheets. Every project starts with the problem, not the technology.

Carbon and Sustainability Reporting for Print and Paper

For printers, paper buyers and publishers who are asked for emissions figures by customers. Upload the tonnages used and the paper and print emissions are worked out for you.

  • Upload tonnages used, by paper type or grade
  • Calculate paper and print emissions from those tonnages
  • Break figures down by job, title, supplier or site
  • Produce consistent reports customers can rely on
  • Every figure traceable to its source document, so you can answer where a number came from
  • Compare period on period without rebuilding anything
  • I have already built a working tool that does this — try the sample version to see the output
See the sample toolDiscuss Your Problem

Practical AI Training

A half day or full day with your team, in your office, using your own documents and tasks. Managers and staff in the same room, so everyone leaves with the same understanding. £750 for a half day, £1,400 for a full day. London and the surrounding area, or remotely.

  • Where AI genuinely saves time, and where it does not
  • Hands-on practice with your real documents and emails
  • Writing instructions that get useful results
  • What must never be put into a public AI tool
  • A short written guide your team keeps afterwards
  • A team of eight saving two hours a week covers the cost within a fortnight
Discuss Your Problem

Budget and Cost Reporting

For finance teams tracking spend against budget on paper and print, where the figures live in different places and only come together at month end.

  • Bring budget lines and actual spend into one view
  • Show variances as they happen, not weeks later
  • Track paper and print costs against agreed rates
  • Give accounts and operations the same set of numbers
  • Reuse the same reporting for other cost areas
Discuss Your Problem

Spreadsheet Rescue

For teams whose spreadsheets have grown beyond what they were built for, and now break, disagree or take too long.

  • Fix broken formulas
  • Clean and organise data
  • Reconcile invoices, stock, costs and usage
  • Build trackers, reports and dashboards
  • Automate repetitive Excel tasks
Discuss Your Problem

AI and Workflow Automation

For repetitive administrative work that follows the same steps every time and does not need a person to do it.

  • Automate repetitive administrative work
  • Extract structured data from PDFs and invoices
  • Create practical AI tools
  • Improve document and reporting workflows
  • Build internal knowledge tools
Discuss Your Problem

Process Improvement

For businesses that know something is inefficient but need an outside view to find where the time actually goes.

  • Review how a business currently works
  • Identify wasted time, duplication and manual effort
  • Recommend practical improvements
  • Build and implement the solution
Discuss Your Problem

Knowledge Capture and Handover

For businesses where one person holds a critical process in their head, and nobody else could run it next week.

  • Map how the work is actually done, day to day
  • Document the decision rules, not just the steps
  • Turn tracked time into a clear process record
  • Build searchable internal knowledge tools
  • Produce handover packs cover staff can follow
Discuss Your Problem

The process

How it works

A short, low-risk process with no long consultancy engagement.

  1. 1

    Tell me what is not working

    A short conversation about the task, the files involved and how much time it takes today.

  2. 2

    I review the process and identify the problem

    I look at the actual work, not a theoretical version of it, and confirm what can be improved.

  3. 3

    I build a practical solution

    A tool, spreadsheet, report or automated workflow your team can use without specialist knowledge.

  4. 4

    You save time and reduce manual work

    You keep the solution, with clear documentation so it does not depend on one person.

About

Commercial experience, not theoretical consultancy.

I am a Production Manager with 22 years of experience at Immediate Media, formerly BBC Magazines.

I negotiate three major supplier contracts each year with a combined annual spend of approximately £6 million.

My experience includes supplier management, budgeting, contract negotiation, data analysis, sustainability reporting, AI implementation, workflow automation, process improvement and project management.

I have built multiple AI tools and automated numerous manual business processes.

Areas of experience

  • Supplier management
  • Budgeting
  • Contract negotiation
  • Data analysis
  • Sustainability reporting
  • AI implementation
  • Workflow automation
  • Process improvement
  • Project management

Recent automation projects

Anonymised examples of work delivered. Results are described in terms businesses recognise, not figures I cannot evidence.

Carbon and Sustainability Reporting

Automated reporting tools that calculate production emissions and compare environmental performance across suppliers and production sites.

Result

  • Faster sustainability reporting
  • Improved data accuracy
  • Easier year-on-year comparisons

Invoice Intelligence

An AI-assisted invoice processing system that extracts key financial information from supplier invoices, validates it and prepares structured accounting data.

Result

  • Reduced manual data entry
  • Improved consistency
  • Faster invoice processing

Commercial Paper Reconciliation

An automated reconciliation process comparing supplier usage, pricing and contractual agreements across multiple data sources.

Result

  • Faster commercial reviews
  • Easier identification of discrepancies
  • Reduced manual checking

Business Knowledge Assistant

An AI-powered knowledge system that lets teams retrieve operational information, documentation and business rules quickly.

Result

  • Less time searching for information
  • Improved consistency
  • Better knowledge sharing

PDF Data Extraction

Workflows that convert complex PDF documents into structured Excel and JSON datasets.

Result

  • Eliminated repetitive manual extraction
  • Improved data quality
  • Significant time savings

Workflow Automation

Automated repetitive reporting, spreadsheet processing and validation tasks that were previously completed by hand.

Result

  • Reduced administration
  • Faster reporting cycles
  • Fewer human errors

Commercial Reporting Dashboards

Dashboards combining operational, commercial and supplier data into clear business reporting.

Result

  • Better visibility
  • Faster decision making
  • Simplified reporting

AI Process Reviews

Worked with business users to identify manual tasks suitable for automation, then built practical AI solutions to improve efficiency.

Result

  • Clear view of where time is lost
  • Practical solutions people actually use
  • Improved day-to-day efficiency

In detail

Case studies

Four examples of operational processes I have reviewed, documented and improved. Clients are anonymised and figures are only quoted where they can be evidenced.

Magazine publishing

Print planning for a flagship weekly title

The highest-margin weekly title in the portfolio had no written process. Print quantities, paper reservations and production deadlines all sat in one person's head, so holiday or illness became a genuine commercial risk.

What I did

  • Mapped the full monthly and weekly production cycle end to end
  • Documented the decision rules behind print run and paper quantity
  • Built a single tracker linking sales forecasts, print orders and paper stock
  • Wrote a plain-language handover pack for cover and successor staff

Result

  • Removed single-person dependency on the most profitable title
  • Faster, more consistent print quantity decisions
  • Cover staff able to run the process without escalation

Print production

Paper procurement and contract tracking

Annual paper contracts covering several million pounds of spend were tracked across separate spreadsheets, emails and supplier statements. Comparing agreed rates against actual usage took days of manual checking.

What I did

  • Consolidated contract terms, grades, volumes and agreed rates into one structured dataset
  • Automated the comparison between contracted rates and invoiced rates
  • Added flags for volume commitments, price movements and off-contract purchases

Result

  • Reduced manual checking across supplier accounts
  • Discrepancies identified before payment rather than after
  • Clearer position ahead of annual contract negotiation

Supply chain

Stock and contingency planning

Paper availability varies by grade, mill and lead time. Contingency stock was managed reactively, which risked either production delays or capital tied up in unused reels.

What I did

  • Modelled usage by grade against lead times and reorder points
  • Built a stock position view combining reserved, allocated and free stock
  • Set simple reorder triggers the team could follow without specialist knowledge

Result

  • Fewer last-minute sourcing decisions
  • Better visibility of stock held against forecast demand
  • Reduced risk of production disruption

Sustainability

Carbon and sustainability reporting

Emissions reporting for production was rebuilt by hand each period from supplier data in inconsistent formats, which made year-on-year comparison unreliable.

What I did

  • Standardised supplier and production data into one reporting structure
  • Automated the emissions calculation and the comparison between sites and suppliers
  • Produced a repeatable report the team can run themselves

Result

  • Faster reporting cycle
  • Improved data accuracy and consistency
  • Reliable year-on-year and supplier-by-supplier comparison

Typical projects

If your problem sounds like one of these, it is worth a conversation.

  • Paper and materials reconciliation
  • Supplier invoice checking against contract rates
  • Print and production planning trackers
  • Stock and contingency visibility
  • Production and commercial reporting dashboards
  • Carbon and sustainability reporting
  • PDF and invoice data extraction
  • AI knowledge bases for operational processes
  • Spreadsheet rescue and optimisation
  • Process reviews and handover documentation

What I don't do

Being clear about this usually saves everyone time.

  • I don't sell AI because it's fashionable.
  • I don't recommend expensive software you don't need.
  • I don't write 100-page reports that nobody reads.
  • I solve real business problems.
  • I automate repetitive work.
  • I build practical solutions that people actually use.

Starting prices

Pricing

Clear starting prices so you know roughly where a project begins.

  • Spreadsheet Health Check

    A review of an existing spreadsheet with a written list of risks and fixes.

    From £95

  • Spreadsheet Fix or Reconciliation

    Repair broken files, clean data, or reconcile invoices, usage and costs.

    From £195

  • Dashboard or Automated Report

    A repeatable report or dashboard built from your existing data sources.

    From £295

  • AI and Process Review

    A review of a workflow with practical recommendations you can act on.

    From £395

  • Custom Automation Project

    Larger automation or AI tool builds, quoted once the scope is clear.

    Price agreed after consultation

Final pricing depends on the complexity, quality and volume of the source data.

Book a Discovery Call

Get in touch

Tell me what is wasting your time.

Send a few details and I will reply with an honest view of whether I can help, and what it would involve.

For example: Excel workbooks, supplier invoices, PDF reports, accounting exports.

Confidentiality

I'm happy to sign a mutual NDA before reviewing your documents or internal processes.

Prefer email? Write to hello@emmapurdy.co.uk.